Remembering Jeff Hanson

The Twin Cities music scene lost a talented voice with the death of songwriter Jeff Hanson, who was killed in an apparent accident at his home on June 5. Decider asked Hanson's friend and bandmate Chris Koza to share his memories of touring and performing with Hanson.

The first time I met Jeff Hanson in person was the night of his Madam Owl CD release at the Triple Rock in August of 2008. Jeff had asked my band to back him during his set, but we were on the road, so we couldn't rehearse with him in advance. To prepare, we listened to his albums in the van as we drove across the western states.

On the night of the show, we met at the venue and rehearsed. Initially, I was surprised by his stature; the high-pitched mystical falsetto I had grown familiar with was defined physically by a short, pale-faced, blue-eyed, bearded fellow in an orange-and-white plaid shirt, blue jeans, and Chuck Taylors. He didn't look any different than anyone else in the club. But in our rehearsal, it didn't take more than half a song to begin to recognize what set Jeff apart from the rest. Besides being amazingly talented, he had an ability to defuse the tension in a room by drawing all of the attention towards himself. Jeff could radiate brilliance or be a black hole, and it was often impossible to predict which Jeff was going to be.

In March, we went on a tour of Scandinavia, performing in a handful of cities. Despite the rain and general gloom, it was a fine time of year to be abroad. Jeff's distinct vocals and intricate songwriting were well-received wherever we went, and he made the bus trips across Sweden and Norway bearable with a never-ending onslaught of unrepeatable wisecracks.

During a tour of the East Coast in April, Jeff and I became obsessed with the Amboy Dukes song, "Journey To The Center Of The Mind." Seemingly every couple hundred miles, it broadcast over satellite radio, but as horrible and as ridiculous as it was, we listened to it every time. While we drove south through New Jersey on our way to Virginia and South Carolina, I learned more about Jeff's diverse musical tastes. He appreciated the more obscure and disregarded artists; the misunderstood held great affection in his esteem.

This past weekend at his memorial in Waukesha, Wis., his friends and family gathered to celebrate his life and mourn his passing. The memory of our all-too-brief friendship and the sorrow of its loss were raindrops amid the wretched confusion and irreconcilable heartache flooding the reception hall. His songs "If Only I Knew" and "The End Of Everything Known" played during a montage of photographs, eerily contrasting the Jeff I knew and the Jeff I would never get to know.

On the night before his tragic accident, I was working on a recording in northern Minnesota near the Canadian border, and received a text message from him: "We should journey to the center of the mind soon." It was a typically opportune comment—and it was the last I would receive. The following day, while I was tracking guitar in the studio, my bandmates came to the door and interrupted with the unbelievable news of Jeff's death. We stood among each other in shock, looking at the trees and staring at the ground. Later that night, we slumped around a campfire and over the crackling wood, quietly talked about how fortunate we all felt to have known him, and how utterly strange and unfair it is to be rushed into goodbyes.

Photos of Hanson and bandmates on tour in Scandinavia and in the eastern U.S. (Courtesy Peter Sieve).